Not The President's Men - Matti Kuusela, the Journalistic Narrative Reimagined, and How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

In an all-but forgotten Garry Marshall -helmed romantic comedy from a little shy of the Early Aughts, a quick-witted newspaper columnist, played by the ever-charismatic Richard Gere, hears a story at his local watering hole. A heart-broken man sitting at the bar next to him, nursing a beer, bursts into an emotional diatribe about his would-be fiancé, who had just left him at the altar, and, according to him, a number of others before him. 

Inspired by the man’s story, Ike writes his column of the week about this incident, titling his piece humorously The Runaway Bride.

After the story has run in the paper, he is surprised to find his editor fuming at her desk on Monday. The alleged Bride has contacted the paper, demanding, with heated words, a correction on the column, and has included a play-by-play with the sum total of 15 downright mistakes or erroneous conjecture in the piece. 

Fired and at his wit’s end, Ike decides to write a follow-up on his original story; he will travel himself to the small town where the lady lives, to see about this mystery escape artist and either offer apologies, or find hard evidence that what he wrote is in fact the truth.

The woman turns out to be none other than Julia Roberts. Romance ensues, and as the Runaway Bride runs from Ike at about midway into the film, there is a lesson to be learned right there, in the moment.

What exactly is this lesson? I don’t remember. What I do remember is how beautifully he reacts, as he witnesses Maggie manhandle her drunk father in the car in broad daylight and she pleads with him not to include the moment in the article. “Of course, I wouldn’t”, Ike whispers, and at that moment the viewers’ hearts are with Ike.

What, if anything, does this have to do with Mr. Kuusela and Aamulehti’s decision to remove hundreds of his feature stories from online? I don’t know. Perhaps nothing.

The last time I saw Matti was at a bookstore opening near where I live. It was a very big deal, because it is equal amounts lunacy and bravery to open any kind of art-related establishment at a time when things are the way they are in Finland, with the government declaring all forms of art a luxury product and cutting financial support from all areas having to do with it, and to not pair the business with an online shop makes the proprietor even more of a certifiable crazy. The fact that the store opened miles from civilization made Tommi Musturi’s endeavour even more powerful and pointed.

So, of course, us, the artists and bohemians of Siuro, were all there to celebrate. Unfortunately, someone who should have been present was on a summer holiday and away at their cabin. As I entered the space, sprawled all the way on the front lawn since it was summer and the weather was gorgeous, I felt most eyes on me. This was to be expected, and I marched along, telling myself to look everyone in the eye and keep my cool, because I had just as much a right to be there as everyone else. People were cordial, some just nodded, some were gracious enough to exchange a few words with me. My publisher was there, and I sat at his table. 

When he told me he was surprised that so-and-so was absent from this event, I realized this absence was at that very moment being blamed, in hushed tones just outside earshot, on my being present at the opening, and the cold waves all around me intensified. Luckily, I was wearing my most luxurious silk dress and underneath, a silk skirt and shirt, I had just had my hair cut, and I knew I was ready, should anybody, anybody at all, cast the first stone. 

This was the moment I saw Matti emerge from inside the bookstore, some new acquisitions in hand. He saw me and had the same look on his face as everyone else. I nodded. He nodded. He looked at me for as long as possible before looking turns into staring and becomes an act of hostility, and I held his gaze. It was without malice, I realized. I tried to smile, but I have no idea if I was successful.

Why is this significant to this story? I don’t know. Perhaps it is not.

My first long manuscript was a thinly disguised account of what I felt my life was about at the point in time when I wrote it. Mixing actual events that had taken place with wild imaginative passages with elements of fantasy and magical realism, the story follows a thirty-something woman working at a movie theater and her attempts to grasp her life, her emotions, the elusive meaning of everything, and her place in the grander scheme of things. 

I included a lot of my work colleagues scrambled into multiple characters, or distilled into a single supporting character, and people from my past and then-present in the story, immersing some people into essences and actions, while others were described largely as they presented themselves to me in reality. I wrote long passages on the difficulties the main character had dealing with other people, her idiosyncrasies and hang-ups, her dislike for people in general sometimes, and the many areas in life she found especially hard without really knowing what was wrong with her; her territoriality regarding her dwellings and important places in general, her troubles as a hostess, a daughter, and as a friend, her tendency to withdraw within herself and create a deep, rich fantasy life where she would converse with famous film makers and writers, and her attempts to make some semblance of sense of her own many-worded, sometimes jumbled, brain.

I loved the finished story, and when I received a hostile backlash resembling a hurricane over it, I was totally shocked and hurt.

I hadn’t meant to hurt anybody. I thought I was being hardest on myself in the text. I was trying to create an emotionally honest account in semi-fictitious form, and for the life of me I could not get past how strongly I felt some people misread the entire story as an act of cruelty towards them, or as some wild, haphazard and half-assed documentary on themselves.

I made my first literary enemies with that manuscript, largely unpublished to this day except for a few, much later translated chapters on the blog. I was completely struck by how maliciously my story had been perceived and learnt something extremely important that day: a lot of the time, folks don’t care about anything one writes or what deeper meaning one is trying to convey, unless they feel it is about them, and if so, they are ready to disembowel the writer at a moment’s notice.

I have faced similar accusations later in life, too, with my blog pieces, but I will never forget the first reaction on what I had considered a great effort, and how taken aback I was for a really long time afterwards.

Why share this story, how does it relate to Mr. Kuusela’s? I don’t know. Maybe there is no connection.

I never knew Matti well. When I first met him, it was at a housewarming party at mine and my then-partner’s new apartment. I also knew him by reputation. Prior to the party and the guests arriving, I had an enormous argument with my partner over who knows what minor detail, the way couples sometimes have a last minute blowout before some important event, and perhaps trying to recover enough to be a benevolent hostess, or simply because of the excitement of the day, I have forgotten most of the evening. The party was held for a specific crowd, and I was nervous and wanted to make a good impression. 

I do remember that the night was a big hit. Everyone got along, everybody had a great time. Matti had to leave early, and we hugged in the hall. It was one of those great, whole-hearted hugs people usually give to those they have known for twenty years instead of twenty minutes. He was drunk on white wine, so was I. Thank you for inviting me, he said. Of course, I said.

With the remaining few, the night went on well past midnight, and there were laughs and stories and, at some point, a hilarious, drunken attempt to try on all my shoes. Despite my inclination to wear sneakers to every occasion, I own a number of beautiful high-heeled ladies’ shoes, and on a whim, they were all dug out from their containers and the women entertained themselves with an exaggerated catwalk-struts around the apartment.

Fast forward to the bookstore opening. As Matti’s and my eyes met from the opposite ends of the lawn, my publisher openly lamented to me that he had assumed the absent person would be there to cover the opening for the paper. I started to respond something to him, but realized there was nothing to say. I could have been holding a sign that denied the absent person’s no show as a direct result of my being present, and still no one would have believed me. And yet, it was the truth.

I looked around at the motley crue gathered on the lawn. My neighbors, my friends, familiar faces from our beloved hamlet, and the owner himself, in good spirits, proud, and talking to the musician. And he should be proud, I remember thinking. It was such a powerful statement he was making by opening Stuff, and his idea behind it was completely in line with how I myself feel about the arts and actual bookstores one can walk in and spend hours just browsing away. The artists, the writers, the professors, the folks from the village. My heart swelled from seeing them all there, supporting Tommi. I sat with a tableful of people for whom I had grown to care deeply, my publisher on one side, my girl Willow on the other, the comic book tattoo artists, the musical performer of the evening, all in various states of delightful drunkenness. Suddenly, I felt my eyes burning. 

We were still months away from disassembling altogether, but I felt suddenly like I was right where I was supposed to be, so happy to be part of things I felt my head spin, yet at the same time, a horrible, unrecognizable, unnamed, and urgent feeling came over me, like a spirit entering my body: that I was out of place and unimportant. The feeling of surplus cargo gnawed on me, and I felt as if an enormous, unspeakable monster was hiding in plain sight, just outside my field of vision, ready to pounce. I made a point to try and shake it off and lighten myself as the breeze cooled towards nightfall.

Simultaneously, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Matti would of course cover the opening, because that is the kind of reporter he is. Which he did.

Is any of this true? Was there a bookstore? Was I there? Or was it all a dream? I don’t know.

I understand the paper had no choice but to respond. But can you say overkill? I bought Raisa Jäntti's poetry book Grand plié solely based on the fact that Mr. Kuusela described the work as breathtaking. Which it is.

A wise woman said, we see things not as they are, but as we are. What, if anything, does this have to do with Mr. Kuusela? I don't know.

Matti, for what it’s worth, you have my support. I may perhaps be the least involved or important person to offer it, I mean typists aren’t really reporters, are they? But be that as it may, you have it.